"If all of mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
-John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1869

Okay, so obviously, not all handicapped people are assholes. However, it seems that most of them are. I have a story to illustrate my point. I work at a state building. We have a parking garage. In said parking garage we have about 10 more handicapped spots than we are federally required to have. There are also about another 10 or so in the parking lot for our building. Even with all of these spots, we usually don't have enough handicapped parking to accommodate all of our handicapped employees (including 5 of whom are wheelchair bound) and any handicapped visitors.

This has created a problem for us. Specifically that any of the wheelchair bound employees who need to have a van accessible parking spot, can't get one. So, someone came up with the idea to reserve five of the van accessible spots on the bottom floor of the parking garage for those people who were in wheelchairs. Great idea, huh? Especially seeing as how we had more than we were required to have, right? So, the powers that be changed 5 of the parking spots to reserved and handed out those to the people in wheelchairs. They also had security monitor the spots in the morning and notify people of the change in status of the parking spots. People were livid. From day one there were people bitching about the change. One person even filed filed a civil rights claim against the people in charge of this. (Apparently their civil rights had been violated because they had to use one of the other handicapped parking spots.)

After a couple of weeks, the signs were changed back and the reserved spots went back to being handicapped spots and anybody in a wheelchair got a collective middle finger from anybody else with a blue hanging tag.

I have given this incident some considerable thought and have come to the following conclusion: Political Correctness is to blame for this incident. Hear me out. It used to be that we had gimps, cripples, and lames. But then, somebody got their feelings hurt, and now they are all categorized as handicapped. Even this term has fallen into disfavor with some who prefer the term handi-capable. Take that into account with the belief that everyone should be treated equally and you have people who barely need to use a cane thinking that they are just as needy of a parking space out front as the people who can't use their legs. There are varying degrees of any segment of society, no matter who they are. With that comes the need to treat different people in different manners. As a result of all of this the people who need those spots the most, are the ones getting screwed out of them.

As a side note, I wish to address all of those people who have the disabled parking tags, but aren't in wheelchairs. I, along with many other people, understand that you may have back problems or an ingrown toenial or whatever it is that qualifies you for your special place, but as outside observers, we don't know what you are feeling. Therefore, we can only make judgements based upon what we observe. That being said, if you park in a disabled parking space (even rightfully so) and are fortunate enough not to use a wheelchair, at least limp. That way anyone that sees you will know that there is a reason for you parking there. Otherwise we all just think you're some asshole who is playing the system or has borrowed someone elses tag so that you can park closer. That's all. Just limp.

Oh, and by the way, obesity is not a disability. Fat people shouldn't get handicapped spots. They should have to park at the far end of the lot and actually walk.

This is funny. Somewhere in Texas, Satanists are really kicking themselves for not playing their favorite number and scores of depressed teenagers who think that they are rebelling by wearing black nail polish and dressing like Marilyn Manson are bemoaning the fact that they are not old enough to play the Lottery. I am holding out for the day that the numbers 0-0-7 come up.

I know that it has been a while since I last posted, but I just had to share this. Now, I'm no stranger to Spam. I've had an email account since about 1994. I had a Rocketmail account before they were taken over by Yahoo. Heck, I even have a throwaway email account that I give when websites that I know are going to spam me ask me for my email. (Currently their are 2227 messages that the spam filter has caught for that one, and probably about a hudred that it has not caught. All of that being said, I recieved a piece of spam that had quite a disturbing title. See for yourselves:

As you can see, this is one of the many people that want to enlarge various parts of my body. Now I'm not married, but I don't think that if I were that I would want to set my wife on fire. Then again, I know several men who would disagree with me on the point of spousal conflagration.